This is how finales were meant to be: the sun is out, and Christophe, our instructor, has thrown in a grand tour of La Plagne for our last day, taking us skiing all the way down the blue runs to the village of Montalbert, several miles beyond our usual haunts.

It's a beautiful, cruising run for the most part, down narrow, wooded paths, something I never imagined I'd be doing before I started (when I thought every run was a Ski Sunday-style belt downhill) or at the beginning of the week (when I was sprawling on my back like a confused, dying fly).

It's largely plain sailing today, for the first couple of hours at least. I get bashed by a chairlift when I thought I had them sussed; my girlfriend tumbles down in a meadow and has to be helped down by Christophe. In one abortive attempt to go slightly off piste, I end up ploughing through a drift and narrowly avoid falling in a river. "Why wasn't this signed?" I demand. As Christophe hauls me out, my girlfriend points out the warning poles a couple of yards behind me.

Even if I was the slightest bit adept at such unregulated adventures, official notices are counselling against off-piste skiing today, with yellow and black flags indicating a significant avalanche risk. Every now and then we hear an explosion, as La Plagne's safety crew blow up mounds of snow to keep the rest of it under control. According to Christophe, there are three types of avalanche - "crusty, slushy and powder" - and just the rush of air caused by any one can be enough to kill an unwary skier.

If we reach Montalbert with ease in the morning, the post-lunch return is much more challenging. After several long chairlift rides, we find ourselves in the middle of cloud at the top of a peak up above Aime 2000. In theory, we're simply at the top of a manageable blue run, but the vertiginous descents involved have me bricking myself. Where the cloud breaks, we are looking straight down into the valley 1,000m below, and my head for heights has deserted me. Christophe suggests I slip-slide down - keeping my skis pointing across the slope and then letting myself slide slowly sideways. For my girlfriend, he comes up with another method: removing her skis, holding onto one end of a pole, and sledging down on the seat of her pants.

If it's a timely reminder that we haven't quite learnt it all yet, we've still made a lot of progress. On a flatter blue run, we ski back to Plagne Centre where we go through the small snow patch where it all began. Instead of taking us straight past at the top of the drag lift, Christophe leads us down to a point barely a metre above the flat ground. "Remember this?" he says, hands on knees, inching forward. It's exactly where, just five days ago, we struggled to stay on our feet as he sent us on our first glide forwards.

At the end of this week, I remain incapable of zipping up my ski jacket or buttoning my trousers over my boots in a hurry, but the bits Christophe taught me have made an astonishing difference. If the first plodding days as a learner can feel occasionally difficult and tedious, reaching the most basic level of semi-competence has given us plenty of scope to enjoy ourselves. And, I'm told, it only gets better. A whole new world of winter holidays awaits - I'll be back. Upright.

About this article

It just gets better

This article was published on
the Guardian website
at 11.58 EST on Saturday 1 February 2003.
It was last modified at 11.58 EDT on Friday 13 October 2006.
It was first published at 19.00 EST on Tuesday 21 November 2006.